THREATS AND RESPONSES; Iraq Report Is Due in '07; Skeptics Want To See It Now

By MARK MAZZETTI

Published: September 28, 2006

In the fall of 2002, weeks before the midterm elections, American intelligence agencies were racing to complete an assessment of Iraq as the Senate prepared to vote on a resolution sought by the White House to prepare the groundwork for war.

Four years later, in the shadow of another midterm campaign, the agencies are again drafting a formal assessment on Iraq. But this time, the document is one that the White House might prefer to see finished later rather than sooner.

In mid-August, John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, gave the go-ahead for a National Intelligence Estimate that will address security in Iraq and the potential for civil war there. White House and intelligence officials say the work is still in its early stages and will not be done until next year.

But Democrats contend that the White House is ''slow rolling'' the document -- that is, deliberately withholding what could be bleak conclusions -- until after the November elections. The Democrats have intensified those complaints since the White House, under political pressure, on Tuesday released parts of a separate intelligence report, a sober assessment of global terrorism.

On Wednesday, Representative Jane Harman of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, even said sources had told her that a draft of the document had been finished.

''I have heard that it's complete, and that it's grim,'' Ms. Harman said.

''There is not a waiting Iraq document that reflects the National Intelligence Estimate that's sitting around gathering dust waiting until after the election,'' Mr. Snow said.

The intelligence estimate is being done at the behest of members of Congress, including Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. It will be the American intelligence community's first comprehensive assessment on the state of the Iraqi insurgency and the sectarian violence in the country since the summer of 2004.

Intelligence analysts are supposed to keep political calculations out of their work. At the same time, those who have worked at the National Intelligence Council, the group in charge of producing the intelligence estimates, say the sometimes politically charged nature of the reports' conclusions make it impossible to operate in a political vacuum.

''The challenge for intelligence officers is how to walk a fine line, not only with regard to judgments, but with regard to timing,'' said Paul R. Pillar, who until a year ago oversaw American intelligence assessments about the Middle East.

Alan Pino, Mr. Pillar's successor at the National Intelligence Council, is now the one walking the fine line. As the national intelligence officer for assessments about the Middle East, Mr. Pino is in charge of a process that usually lasts several months: from first deciding what specific subjects a National Intelligence Estimate will examine to ensuring that the government's 16 intelligence agencies sign off on the final draft.

The clock on the current report started running with Mr. Negroponte's approval in August, and on Tuesday, Frances Fragos Townsend, the president's domestic security adviser, said it would probably be completed in January.

In a letter to Mr. Negroponte on Wednesday, Ms. Harman called the timetable ''unacceptable,'' and suggested that he might be trying to hold the report until after Election Day.

''N.I.E.'s have been produced in as little as several weeks, as in the case of the 2002 report on Iraqi W.M.D.,'' Ms. Harmon wrote.

Republicans counter that the 2002 Iraq assessment was hardly a model to emulate. Several government investigations have discredited the conclusions of that report, which asserted that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. That estimate was hastily assembled in the fall of 2002, requested by lawmakers who said they wanted the intelligence community's best judgments about Iraq before they voted to authorize the invasion.

But after American troops invaded Iraq in March 2003, Iraq became the primary focus of American intelligence agencies. They have produced volumes of analysis on the insurgency and sectarian violence in Iraq, and on the political and economic situation there.

This, some experts say, already gives intelligence officials the building blocks for a National Intelligence Estimate that could be completed in a relatively short time.

''There's not a lot of basic research that needs to be done, that's for sure,'' Mr. Pillar said.